


I Get It

by anistarrose



Series: Maybel 2018 [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (more or less), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Weirdmageddon, Present Tense, brief mention of suicidal intentions, but no one gets hurt and there's a happy ending, i can't read a comfort prompt without inserting the word hurt in front of it, very brief canon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 23:59:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14682228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anistarrose/pseuds/anistarrose
Summary: Weirdmageddon is over, but that doesn’t mean everything is happy and perfect.





	I Get It

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Month of Maybel 2018 Week 2: Comfort.
> 
>  
> 
> https://themonthofmaybel.tumblr.com/

“There’s gotta be _something_ we can do to jog his memory!” Mabel cries.

“There isn’t,” replies Grunkle Ford. He turns toward her, and she can see his eyes are just as wet as hers. “I’m sorry. Stan’s gone.”

_No. Stan can’t be gone. He can’t be! I thought – I thought everything was going to be okay…_

“I _know_ my Grunkle is in there somewhere! There’s gotta be something around here that can help bring him back!” She notices her scrapbook lying on the floor and grabs it, jumping on to Stan’s chair and opening it up in her lap. “This’ll work! This has to work!”

“Here’s the first day we came to Gravity Falls, Grunkle Stan! And here’s a macaroni interpretation of my emotions!”

She flips through more pages, afraid to look at Stan’s face to see if he found anything familiar or if he was just becoming more confused.

“That time we went fishing? That Summerween we spent together?” Dipper adds.

“The time – the time we all fell into the bottomless pit?” stammers Soos. “The days we all hung out at the pool and you showed me the perfect lawn chair? Mister Pines?”

“The time you let Mabel run the Mystery Shack for a bet?”

_This is wrong. This is all wrong. Why is this happening?_

“Stanley, do you remember the portal? Do you remember all… all the work you did to save me?” Ford has his hand on his brother’s shoulder, but he isn’t making eye contact.

“I…” Stan shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I’m trying, but… I just don’t…”

“No!” Mabel cries, clapping her hands over her ears. “No, no, no! This isn’t how it’s supposed to go! Grunkle Stan, you’re supposed to _remember_! I know you are!”

“Oh no, kiddo, don’t… I’m okay, really…”

“You’re not okay! None of this is okay!” Mabel shrieks with more volume than she’d intended, jumping down from the chair. She rushes over to where Waddles is sniffing at the wreckage from the Shack-O-Tron battle and picks him up, setting him back down on Stan’s lap.

“What about Waddles?” she pleads. “You’ve gotta remember Waddles!”

Stan just blinks. “Uh, right, Waddles. Yeah, that’s a… real cute pig you got there, huh?”

“Grunkle Stan, you – you saved him from a pterodactyl! There’s no way you forgot that! Right?”

“I… what?”

Mabel bursts into tears.

_No, no, no, this isn’t right, Waddles was supposed to work, if Waddles didn’t work than what will…_

“Oh no, sweetie, don’t cry… I’m so sorry, I’m really trying to remember…”

Waddles jumps down from Stan’s lap and makes his way to Mabel’s side, bumping his nose against her shin. Mabel just curls up into a ball. She can’t bear to see her grunkle’s confused face any more.

After some amount of time – it could have been a minute or an hour, she feels Dipper put a hand on her shoulder.

“Please, just leave me be!”

“Yeesh, drama queen, relax! I’m just trying to comfort my favorite sister!”

_No. Not him. No no no no no this isn’t right this isn’t happening no no no no no –_

“You’ve been saying that word a lot recently, Shooting Star! Why don’t you give _yes_ a shot? It works pretty well alongside some maniacal laughter – here, I’ll demonstrate!”

Mabel will not look up and see those slit yellow eyes and psychotic smile on her brother’s face. She refuses.

“What are you doing in my brother’s body?” she asks, face still buried against her knees. “My grunkles _killed_ you!” _This is wrong this can’t be happening what is_ wrong _with me –_

“Did they? I can’t say I _remember_ anything like that – oh, too soon? Sorry, I forgot I was supposed to be comforting you, like the fantastic brother I am!” Stifling a laugh, he squeezes her shoulder much harder.

On instinct, Mabel jerks away. “Let go of me, you triangular –” She slams into a railing that collapses beneath her, and nearly topples over the edge – _where is she?_ – before Bipper grabs her by the arm.

“Woah there, Shooting Star, don’t want to fall to Earth just yet, do we?”

“I said let go of me!”

Bipper’s grin grows even wider. “Are you sure you want that?” He gestures to the spray-painted wooden cylinder behind him. “Haven’t you even noticed where we are? I mean, falling now would be a pretty exhilarating experience – that’s why I’m here in the first place! – but for you it would kinda be a one-time thing, you know?”

They’re on the water tower. Mabel is leaning over more than a hundred feet of thin air. How are they on the water tower?

“Here’s the deal, Shooting Star. I’m going to give you two options. I could pull you to safety right now, but if I do that, I’m going to go for a little skydive myself. Or, I let go of you right now, but your brother’s body gets to go down on the ladder and have him inhabit it again. Got it?”

“I – why would you make me make a choice like that?”

“ _Just for the heck of it_!” Bipper replies gleefully. “What other reason is there to do anything?”

“I –” It’s raining now, her hair is blowing in the wind, she needs more time to think of a way out –

_Mabel, can you hear me?_

“Dipper?”

“Your brother can’t help you now, Shooting Star!” Bipper cackles.

_Mabel, are you okay?_ It’s unmistakably Dipper’s voice.

“Dipper, help me!” Mabel cries.

_Mabel, it’s just a nightmare! Whatever is happening, you’re safe, I promise!_

“Time’s up! Given how selfish you’ve been all summer, I’ll just assume you chose to save yourself and pull you up now before I –”

“NO! I won’t let you!” Mabel lunges forward as Bipper began to pull, knocking him flat and pinning him to the platform. “You’re staying right here until you give my brother his body back!”

“Oof! Mabel, it’s me! Everything’s okay, I promise!”

Mabel opens her eyes. She has Dipper pinned to the floor of the attic. His expression is very startled, but it’s his. One of her sheets is still tangled around her leg.

“Oh, no! Dipper, are you okay? I thought – I didn’t realize I was –”

“Hey, it’s okay. It was just a bad dream, I tried to help but I guess I made it worse, I’ll know better next time – not that I hope there’s going to be a next time, I – uh, do you want to talk about it, or am I just making things worse?”

Holding back tears, Mabel runs from the room.

“Oh no, Mabel, I’m sorry!”

_I could have hurt him – how am I supposed to explain why – he wouldn’t get it – the dream was right I’m self-centered and horrible and I make everything worse for everyone –_

She bursts out the door and barely stops herself before slamming into Stan, who’s sitting on the porch.

“Whoa there, pumpkin, what’s going on?” He turns around and frowns as he notices her expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Grunkle Stan, you remember me, right? Please say you remember me! You’ve gotta –”

Stan hugs her. “Of course I do, Mabel. Some of my memories might still be settling into place, but you and that pig of yours were two of the first things to come back, remember?”

In that moment of relief, Mabel gives up on trying not to cry. “I know, Grunkle Stan,” she sobs, “or at least I should have known, I just – I needed –”

Stan pats her head. “It’s okay. I get it.”

He’s quiet for a moment as Mabel slowly gets her tears under control.

“You had a nightmare about me forgetting, didn’t you?”

“How’d you know?”

Stan sighs. “I get those kinds of dreams too, sweetie – well, for different reasons, but I know what waking up is like sometimes. The night I finally remembered the portal… incident, I woke up convinced Stanford was still stuck on the other side. Couldn’t understand how I got upstairs and why I wasn’t down in the basement trying to fix the thing. Didn’t snap out of it until Ford heard me trip in the hallway and I saw him in the flesh.”

“Oh no!” Mabel gasps. “Grunkle Stan, that’s – that’s really – I’m so sorry!”

Stan steps back, frowning. “Oh, I knew I shouldn’t have told you. I just wanted you to know that you weren’t –”

“What? No! Why would you say that?” Mabel asks him.

“Why… what?”

“Shouldn’t have told me? You’ve got it all wrong! Why didn’t you tell us you were going though that?! We could have helped you feel better!”

“I…” Stan looks genuinely surprised. “I didn’t want you and Dipper to worry about me. And, I guess, I didn’t think you’d get why I was so convinced that Ford was still… well, that sounds stupid now, huh. Of course you’d understand, that’s why I’m telling you in the first –”

“Oink!”

“Oh, Waddles!” Mabel scoops up her pig as he waddled onto the porch. “I didn’t make you worry, did I?”

Dipper follows Waddles out. “Mabel, I’m so sorry that I just made you feel worse…”

“Dipper, I’m the one that should be apologizing to you!” Mabel blurts out. “I knocked you down and ran away without telling you what was wrong because I thought you wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t forgive me! But I was being stupid, wasn’t I?”

“Mabel, I don’t understand…”

Stan puts a hand on Mabel’s shoulder. “Hey, I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what happened, but don’t go blaming yourself, okay? That goes for you too, Dipper.”

“Grunkle Stan?” Dipper sounds concerned. “What are you doing out here?”

“Just talking to Mabel about nightmares, and I guess about being stubborn and not telling other people what’s goin’ on.”

Dipper smiles sadly. “I might be a little guilty of that myself…”

Mabel had wondered about that. The two previous nights, she’d heard some noise from Dipper’s side of the room and woken up, only for him to assure her that everything was fine and apologize for waking her. “Hey, Dipper. Promise me that next time something like that happens, you’ll let us all know so we can help you, right? And that goes for you too, Grunkle Stan!”

Before Stan can reply, Ford appears in the doorway behind Dipper. 

“Is everything alright?” he asks.

“Oh no, Grunkle Ford, did we wake you up?”

Ford shakes his head. “No. Well, kind of, but I’m a naturally light sleeper. You could have accidentally rolled out of your bed in your sleep and it would have woken me.”

“Ha, Dipper used to do that all the time! They had to put a fence thing on his bed so he didn’t fall out every night!”

Dipper gently punches his sister’s arm, red with embarrassment but not upset. “Hey, you needed it on your bed for almost as long!”

Ford chuckles. “I suppose everything is more or less alright, then, if you’re making fun of each other.”

“It wasn’t alright a few minutes ago,” Mabel explains. “But it’s getting better. Talking to people helps. I know that now.”

“Good to hear.” He sits down on the couch. “It’s difficult to readjust to… well, simply to no one being in danger.”

“Yeah,” Mabel agrees, “but we’ve got each other…” Her voice trails off.

“Something wrong, pumpkin?” Stan asks as he gets up to join Ford on the couch.

“It’s just… what will we do when Dipper and I leave Gravity Falls? I mean, I’ll have him and you guys will have each other, but…”

Ford’s eyes light up. “Mabel, I assure you that you won’t have to worry about that. Dipper showed me how to set up a webcam on my new laptop, so we can call you two and talk face-to-face when you’re in California and we’re on –” He shoots a quick glance at Stan, “Well, when we’re in Gravity Falls or anywhere else we might end up.”

“We were going to tell you all about it with a cool demonstration tomorrow morning,” Dipper explains.

“We could do it right now, if you want!” Ford adds, and the battle in his mind between enthusiasm and exhaustion is visible on his face. Exhaustion wins, narrowly. “Though it might be better to wait until morning. I’m pretty comfortable here.”

“Join us on the couch, kids,” says Stan. “I know you’re younger than we are, but if we stay here talkin’ out our issues for much longer your butts are gonna hurt in the morning.”

“Good plan,” agrees Mabel. She goes to sit in Stan’s lap, but Waddles gets there first, and Stan fakes a look of disgust but lets him stay.

“If you ever need to talk about something – _anything_ , nightmares or otherwise – please, just call us,” Ford assures the kids.

Mabel nods. “We will. But you better do the same, Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford!”

“Of course, pumpkin,” Stan tells her.

"We will,” Ford adds, and then follows it with something under his breath that sounds like _Timezones be damned_. Stan gives him a suspicious – though not angry – look, but doesn’t say anything.

They all stay on the couch, four Pines and one pig, until Soos comes to work in the morning and accidentally wakes them up. Even with the bugs flying through the air and creatures roaring in the woods, it’s the best night of sleep any of them have had in weeks.

**Author's Note:**

> IRUG ZDVQ’W DFWXDOOB DVOHHS. KH ZDV ELQJH-ZDWFKLQJ GXFNWHFWLYH.
> 
> As usual, comments are appreciated!


End file.
